Steven Wilson Shares Title Track From Upcoming Album “requiem For A Village”

Steven Wilson, a six-time Grammy Award nominee as a musician, songwriter, and producer, has laid out the details of his ninth studio album. Requiem for a Village lands via Fiction Records on Friday, Nov. 6, with a format spread that covers digital, CD, Blu-ray, 140g double-LP black vinyl, a 2x Oxblood 12″ vinyl edition, and a box set holding two CDs and a Blu-ray disc packaged inside a 96-page hardback book.

Where Wilson‘s well-received eighth album, 2025’s The Overview, pushed outward into the vastness of deep space, Requiem for a Village pulls the lens way in — down to a fictional, forgotten pocket of the British Isles that feels untouched by the modern world. It’s a place where Stanley Spencer paintings line the local gallery, where M.R. James and Algernon Blackwood stories fill the public library shelves, and where the Children of the Stones play out in the market square. Wilson steered clear of A.I. and any corrective studio tricks this time, leaning instead into organic instrumentation and letting imperfections stay in the mix rather than getting scrubbed out.

Described as intimate, ambitious and more than a little eccentric, Requiem for a Village carries a narration penned by XTC‘s Andy Partridge and read by David Tennant — known for Doctor Who, Broadchurch and Rivals. Longtime collaborator and multi-instrumentalist Randy McStine, drummer Russell Holzman , and vocalist Katherine Priddy round out the backing musicians.

The title track, “Requiem for a Village,” premiered today across DSPs and streaming platforms — a chaotic burst of frantic drums, a driving bassline, and jagged guitars that build into something like a soundtrack for the end of the world. A companion live performance video, the first entry in a planned Village Sessions series filmed with McStine and Holzman, also went up today on YouTube. Alongside all that, an exclusive clip of the album’s narration dropped earlier in the week, tied to a new website styled as a parish council page for the fictional village, stacked with song and lyric references and hidden Easter eggs for fans to dig through.

“I wanted to get back to a kind of music where you can hear the metaphorical thumbprints,” said Wilson. “Doubling down on the human gestures and flaws in the music, stuff that can’t be created using software. For example using only analogue synths with all their unpredictability, or not having instruments perfectly in tune. But it also lead to me picking up the violin, the oboe, or trying my hand on the drums — playing things I don’t really know how to play but getting something out of them that inspired me in ways I didn’t expect. Approaching the music with a sense of innocence and seeing where it took me. And where it took me was to the village.”

Wilson will give the album an early spin during a DJ set at London’s The Social (5 Little Portland Street, London, W1W 7JD) on Tuesday, Sept. 22. Billed as Songs From the Village, the set will trace the influences behind the record, pulling from the hazy textures of Boards of Canada and Demdike Stare, the eerie ragas of Third Ear Band, and the unsettling tone of British children’s television and broadcasts from the 1970s. Proceeds go to Here 2 Belong, a U.K. charity that supports care-experienced young people as they move into independent living.

The following month brings two already-sold-out shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Oct. 28-29 — Wilson‘s seventh time headlining the venue. The performances will feature new orchestral arrangements of The Overview alongside other material prepared specifically for the shows, backed by his band, the Parallax Orchestra, and the Sansara Choir under conductor Tom Richards. More live dates are expected to follow.

Requiem for a Village is available to pre-order here.

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